


1 in 14,000,605

by AbnormalGlasses



Series: Infinity [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers - Freeform, Avengers: Infinity War, Infinty War - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:12:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14631945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbnormalGlasses/pseuds/AbnormalGlasses
Summary: Doctor Strange saw over 14 million possible outcomes to the battle against Thanos. Only one of them ended in The Universe’s favor.This is the one he saw.MAJOR SUPER DUPER SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WARYOU HAVE BEEN WARNED





	1. The Beginning of the End

“Why would you do that?”

Tony Stark, tired and defeated, looked on at his new acquaintance with nothing but sadness. Doctor Stephen Strange, a man who – until moments ago – had pledged to let Stark himself die in order to protect the Time Stone. And he had just traded it for Tony’s life. Traded it to the most powerful being in the cosmos. For what? 

“We’re in the endgame, now.” Strange, mysterious as always, replied. 

Thanos the Mad Titan had vanished in a cloud of blue energy just moments after receiving the Time Stone from Strange. As soon as he stepped into the portal, Tony felt an eight-megaton weight of dread press into his shoulders. Also, he had just been stabbed, and it hurt like hell.

He felt like throwing up.

It took Tony a moment to evaluate where Thanos would be heading. He had acquired five of the six stones. That left the only one Tony had ever seen up close, analyzed, studied as thoroughly as his technology would allow – the one currently in Vision’s head. 

Thanos was going to Earth.

 

FOUR HOURS EARLIER

 

All Stephen Strange wanted was a sandwich.

Of course, the last time he had bought a sandwich, it had been enchanted to decay his astral form from the inside and cut him off from the mystic arts, so he probably should have just ordered takeout. But his appetite faltered now when The Hulk fell from space and destroyed his stairs.

~~~~

“Slow down, Dr. Banner.” 

“Thanos! He’s – he’s… wh- where am I? What’s – who are you?”

Strange and Wong helped the recently-reentered Bruce Banner out from the crater he had formed, trying to decipher his incoherent rambles.

“I’m Doctor Stephen Strange. This is the New York Sanctum, you’re safe here. Please, sit down and tell me what’s on your mind.” He took a wobbly Banner under the arm and guided him to a sofa against the wall, throwing a worried look to Wong. Banner sunk into the seat, barely recognizing the sudden apparition of a set of freshly ironed clothes next to him.

“Thanos is coming… He’s coming here…”

That name ran through Stephen like a shot of ice. During his last several years as Sorcerer Supreme he had compiled a list of People of Interest – cosmic beings to keep tabs on that may be potential threats. The Mad Titan Thanos was on the very top of that list, for good reason.

If you had the right connections, like Stephen had, it was impossible not to have heard about Thanos through the cosmic grapevine. He was a ruthless dictator, having killed millions – possibly billions – in his quest for universal dominance. Thanos had been the one behind the attack on New York six years ago. His army of Chitauri rained down from above Stark Tower and caused hell for almost eight hours before The Avengers – the now-quivering Banner included – put a stop to it. Stephen had been away on vacation at the time. How different life had been in those days.

“Thanos? Coming to Earth?” Wong pressed, worry lacing his usually calm tone. He glanced at Stephen. 

“Yes! We have to warn everyone, I have to – 

Bruce started getting more frantic, almost as if he was just beginning to wake up. He started to stand, put Stephen placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You need to rest, Doctor. Have a drink and allow your mind to calm. Leave this to us.” He said, trying to keep the fear from his own voice as he summoned a cup of tea to Bruce’s hand. He sipped it, seemingly ignoring the fact that it had just appeared from thin air.

As Bruce enjoyed his chamomile, Stephen grabbed Wong by the elbow and pulled him aside. 

“We have to find him.”

Wong’s face contorted into a familiar frown.

“No. He, of all of them, is the last one we want meddling in our business. What about the Asgardian? He dropped by just over a week ago, didn’t he?”

“That was Bifrost energy that just dumped our green friend here. I know of no other beings than Asgardians to be able to summon such power, and if only Banner barely made it through, then I am inclined to believe that Thor and his people may be out of our reach.” 

Wong tried to find a fault in this, but eventually ceded to Stephen’s logic.

“I don’t like him any more than you do, my friend. But he’s the best hope Earth has for defending against the Titan.”

“I thought we were.” Wong said, a sour look on his face.

“We are not enough.” Strange replied, an equally sour look on his own face.

“Man, this stuff is awesome! What sort of magic enchantment is on this?” Bruce chimed in from behind them, having sucked down his mug of tea.

Wong opened his mouth to say something - probably insult him - but Strange steered him away again, flicking his fingers to refill the cup, eliciting a small ‘ooh’ from Banner. 

“No magic, just honey. Works wonders.”

He turned to Wong.

“Locate Stark. I’ll find out what I can from Dr. Banner,” he said with finality, giving Wong a reassuring pat on the back before walking back over to Bruce. Wong groaned and took a  
few steps towards the center of the room, beginning to form various sigils with his hands. 

“We’re going to find Tony Stark. Do you have any idea where he may be?”

Bruce shook his head.

“I’ve kinda… been out of town for a while,” he explained sadly, looking back down at his mug of tea. He set it aside and grabbed the shirt, pulling it over his head as he stood to face Strange. 

“You… wouldn’t happen to know where Natasha is? Black Widow?” He asked hopefully. Stephen shook his head, hoping to get back to the pressing matters. 

“Sorry, no. Now, Dr. Banner, this is important – What were the circumstances of your encounter with Thanos?”

And Banner explained. In fact, he explained everything. His time on Sakaar, Thor, Hela, something about a giant wolf, Asgard, Thanos’ warship catching the Asgardian lifeboat in a tractor beam and Thanos boarding. He explained how with a mere raise of his fist, the Titan was able to wipe out almost all of the Asgardians on the ship. He explained how Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Valkyrie, Korg, and several others banded up to take on Thanos and his posse – but the enemy was far too powerful. He explained how Loki offered up the Space Stone to spare his brother, then sacrificed his life trying to assassinate the warlord. He explained, with hyperventilation threatening him, how he himself engaged with Thanos, and how he lost brutally. And Bruce explained how Heimdall had used his dying breath to send him to Earth – to send him home.

“He’s… he’s already got two Infinity Stones. I don’t know if you know what those are, Infinity Stones… but…” 

Strange held up a finger to silence him. “Yes, we’re quite knowledgeable in the field of the Infinity Stones.”

Bruce nodded. “Okay, okay good, we need to find Vision, he’s got one of them, the – uh, the which one, the…” 

“The android known as The Vision is in possession of the Mind Stone. The Time Stone, the only other of the Earth-Bound Infinity Stones, is safe here in the Sanctum.” Wong piped up from the middle of the foyer. 

“If Thanos has already gained the Power and Space stones, that makes him quite possibly the most powerful entity this universe has seen,” he erased his sigils from the air and turned to face Strange.

“I found him,” he proclaimed, a holographic map of New York appearing in front of him. Then, “Are you sure you want Stark’s help?”

“We’re out of options.”

Stephen turned to Bruce.

“The fate of reality is depending on us. Can you handle that?”

“Not really, but what else is new?”

Fair enough, Stephen thought to himself, pulling on his sling ring and focusing on a park in downtown New York. 

 

/We’re out of options./


	2. Chess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Strange saw over 14 million possible outcomes to the battle against Thanos. Only one of them ended in The Universe’s favor.
> 
> This is the one he saw.
> 
>  
> 
> MAJOR SUPER DUPER SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR
> 
> YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Tony tried to stand, but the hole in his abdomen screamed in opposition. So, he stayed seated.

~Damn this Wizard~, he thought. His head dipped into his hand and he rubbed his temples, hoping to ease the headache of existential dread that was forming at the base of his skull.

They had been so god damn close. The kid had managed to pull the gauntlet off, for Christ’s sake. If Quill had just kept his anger in check, if he had just thought for a damn /second/ –

Tony cleared himself from that train of thought. Unchecked anger - no matter how rational - wasn’t helpful right now and recalling the screw-ups of the day would only further solidify his desire to shoot himself. 

“We have to get to Earth.” He decided aloud, avoiding eye contact with Strange. 

“The fight for Earth will be decided with or without our presence, Tony. Our jobs are done.”

Now Tony did meet Strange’s eyes, anger and refusal bubbling up in his chest. Strange’s gaze was pointed, unwavering, and indecipherably determined, not showing any signs of defeat or fear, or uncertainty.

~What the hell is wrong with this guy?~

 

ONE HOUR EARLIER

 

If he had to listen to one more cockfight between Tony Stark and the new guy, (Star-Prince? Starbeam?) Stephen was going to throw them both into the Dark Dimension.  
So he decided to be productive. He found a nice quiet rock and entered a Time Stone-aided meditative state, scanning the vast spectrum of timelines to glean an idea of their odds in the inevitable brawl with Thanos. 

 

As soon as he closed his eyes, he felt immediately overwhelmed.

 

Stephen had viewed the Probability Stream before, on two separate occasions. One was brief, during his altercation with Dormammu – he had gotten a glimpse of several outcomes of his plan to Groundhog-Day the Evil Entity into submission, many of which ended in eternal pain for Stephen. He still wasn’t sure why he ever decided to go along with it.  
The second time was born of pure necessity. After he had sent Thor to find Odin, Stephen had felt a great surge of power enter Midgard. He did some poking around and discovered that The Allfather’s death had prompted the release of an ancient Goddess called Hela, which meant bad news for Asgard – and, by extension, Earth. It was too late for Strange to intervene by the time he found out, which meant all he could do was spectate. So, he had activated the Eye of Agamotto and took a look at the possible outcomes of Hela’s conquest of Asgard, many of which seemed to end poorly. The few Stephen saw that ended in victory for Asgardians ended in destruction for Asgard itself.

 

\---This was Stephen’s first lesson.---

 

Now, sitting above the ground on the distant planet of Titan, Stephen Strange closed his eyes and instantly saw millions upon millions of timelines. Streams of black and green and yellow and red, so much red, all flashing and spreading around the Temporal Plane, moving so quickly it hurt his head. Stephen knew from experience that the timelines of red were ones that held the least favorable outcomes – almost all he could see was red. Millions of glowing strands of potential, 99% of them bad. But Stephen steeled himself. He didn’t care about the red ones. He cared about the white. All he needed was one.

 

“Is that normal?” Quill, concerned, pointed at Doctor Strange, who was wreathed in green light as he hovered several inches above the ground, his head flickering wildly back and forth, various pained expressions playing across his face.  
“Doc?” Tony pressed, concerned at the current distant nature of possibly the most knowledgeable person in their company. He took a few tentative steps closer, just in time to catch the Doctor as he dropped from his meditation.  
“Woah, okay, you’re back with us now. What’s going on?” Stark asked, placing a sturdy hand on Strange’s shoulder. He blinked, looking around as if just returning to reality (he had), then back at Tony as if shocked to see him alive (he was).  
“I… I looked ahead at every possible result of the coming battle.” He explained to stunned faces.  
Quill was the one to step forward.  
“How many did you see?” He asked hesitantly, worry plastered over his face.  
Strange looked between the band of heroes anxiously assembled before him.  
“Fourteen Million, Six Hundred and Five.”  
“How many did we win?” Came Stark, his voice tinted with a calculative outlook.  
At this, Strange hesitated. 

In what had been almost a month to him, Stephen had seen every detail of every move that needed to be made in order to defeat Thanos. He had lived the successful outcome dozens of times, studying everything he could think of. He knew who lived. He knew who died. He knew that in the end, it came down to Tony Stark, the futurist; Scott Lang, the man doing everything for his daughter; Steve Rogers, a man who had lost so much and yet still had so much to lose; and Carol Danvers, a remarkable woman that hadn’t stepped foot on Earth in almost two decades. Stephen knew all of this and more. But most importantly, he knew - in order to win, they had to lose everything. 

“One.”

A small ‘Oh, shit’ came from Quill, but Tony Stark kept Strange’s gaze in silence.

“One?” 

“One.” Stephen confirmed.

Stark took a moment to process this. 

“Well, one in fourteen million isn’t bad. I’ve lived my life on bad odds, what’s one more day at the craps table?” He joked, but the light of humor behind his eyes had vanished. 

 

~One.~

 

/In order to win, they had to lose everything./


	3. Endgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Strange saw over 14 million possible outcomes to the battle against Thanos. Only one of them ended in The Universe’s favor.  
> This is the one he saw.
> 
> MAJOR SUPER DUPER SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR  
> YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so short – the next one should be the longest of all of them, and it will hopefully be out by next week if my connection improves. I hope everyone that’s been reading this fic has been enjoying it, and I want to thank those of you who are bearing with me since this is basically a first-edit upload story, so things might be a little wonky now and again, and I’ve also only seen the movie once, so I’m going off pure memory.  
> I’m going do to more to the ‘Infinity’ story collection, probably something with Daredevil next. Enjoy!

Endgame.

 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, our jobs are done?” Stark said to Strange, wishing his bruised lungs had the capability of yelling.  
Strange simply gave him a hardened look. “It means the fate of the universe is out of our hands. And it will stay that way.” 

 

NOW.

Strange watched, a familiar tinge of sadness hitting his stomach, as Peter Quill disintegrated into ash. Tony, wide-eyed with shock, turned to Strange. But Stephen knew nothing could be done. He knew what had to occur, and no matter how much he wished it was different all he could do was sit and wait. And sure enough, after a few moments, Strange felt a small tingling beginning in his toes, that quickly spread up his legs. Once it hit his stomach, the feeling turned sickly, and he held back an anxiety attack as his legs slowly faded into oblivion.   
He returned Stark’s gaze, replying to his fearful eyes with an apologetic look.  
“It was the only way.” 

Those were Stephen Strange’s last words before he blew away in the soft Titan breeze, reduced to nothing but flecks of matter.

 

The plan had already been set in motion. 

 

Either by immensely fortunate foresight or simply pure luck, Loki had played the first card when he surrendered the Space Stone to Thanos. This gain in the Titan’s favor would determine his success at the collection of the four remaining stones. 

The acquirement of the Power Stone was inevitable. A massive butterfly effect of events locked the Power Stone on a crash course with Thanos’ gauntlet, something that could not be avoided. But the Space Stone’s gain was consistently in a state of flux. In some of the timelines Strange had witnessed, Thanos found it amongst the rubble of Asgard. In others, Thanos’ children had managed to retrieve the Time Stone before any of the other stones – allowing Thanos to simply reach back in time and take the rest all at once. One timeline in particular had Thanos collect the Mind Stone first, use it to scan the minds of the entire population of the universe, and divine the location of the remaining Stones in less than ten minutes. Another, one that Strange was sure would haunt him, had the Mad Titan turn the Avengers into simple tin soldiers, leaving them on the shelf of a remote hut for all eternity.

But after what seemed like weeks, Strange found the single success out of a sea of failures. 

At first, it seemed like another loss. Thanos had acquired all six stones in less than a week and used them to wipe out half the life in the universe – something he had ended every timeline doing. Strange even watched himself give up the Time Stone to save Tony’s life, something he remembered swearing against mere hours ago.  
But this timeline seemed different. This one felt off.  
Strange continued to watch as Avengers and Guardians alike vanished into ash. He watched with difficulty as he himself blew away, leaving Tony Stark alone on a distant world. And he watched as Thanos crippled the Infinity Gauntlet with the fateful snap of his fingers, splitting the universe in two.

Doctor Strange watched in fast forward as five years passed.   
Those five years would become the most important years in the history of the universe. 

 

It was the only way.

That’s what he had said. 

If he had known Stephen Strange better, Tony Stark would have felt more comfort in the Mystic Master’s words. But Stark didn’t know him better. He had only met him like, half a day ago. In that time, the universe had turned from mildly alright to complete and utter chaos. Trillions of lives had vanished in an instant. Many millions more had died in the following moments and hours and weeks as half of the universe’s doctors, soldiers, aircraft pilots, and more left much of the remaining population without proper care.  
And Tony Stark, Earth’s Mightiest hero, one of the lucky survivors, was alone on a distant planet, light years from Earth.

So he did the only thing he could.  
He got to work.


	4. Stranded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor Strange saw over 14 million possible outcomes to the battle against Thanos. Only one of them ended in The Universe’s favor.  
> This is the one he saw.
> 
> MAJOR SUPER DUPER SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR  
> YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright hi, it's been a minute
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry sorry sorry it's been like a month since I've updated this but life got in the way and I had other projects and I had no creative battery power for a while and I just ugh
> 
>  
> 
> But the fourth of (maybe) fifth chapter is here now, and it's a pretty good length, and I'm happy with it. The fifth and (maybe) final chapter should not take a month to come out but I'm hoping it will also be 2,000+ words, which apparently takes me two dozen days to write.
> 
>  
> 
> Obvious, but gotta say - Spoilers for Infinity War, if by some miracle you haven't seen it or haven't gotten it spoiled for you already. Alright, I hope you enjoy! :)

-Stranded-

 

Tony was too shocked to notice that Nebula almost immediately took off for the Benatar. He didn’t realize until several hours later that she had escaped Titan, leaving him completely on his own on an alien world.

\----------------------------------

The first thing Tony did after the Ashing was locate the crashed Q-Ship. He figured if he could at least turn it on again, he’d have some sort of shelter while he figured out what to do – if there even was anything left do. He tried his hardest not to think like that and instead focused pushing the previously-latent determination and always-prominent anger to the forefront of his mind. He reminded himself that Thanos had taken half the universe from him.  
He had taken the kid.  
Tony was going to get them back.

He found the Q-Ship a mile or so away from the battlefield, looking worse for wear – the scars of he and Peter’s hasty landing were quite fresh on the portside armor plates - but still mostly intact. He took stock of what he had left; breathable air, a semi-working suit, a giant flying donut that may or may not still fly, and his sanity. He wasn’t quite sure how long any of that would last, but it was better than nothing.  
Once he had determined his assets, he made a shopping list of essentials he was missing, the primary items being food and water. He knew that his connection with Friday was long gone, as it had been once he had left Earth’s satellite sphere, and in losing Friday he lost contact with his Nanodrones meant to repair his suit mid-battle as well as any communications with SHIELD or the remaining Avengers. Food wouldn’t be an immediate problem – he had stored fifteen miniature protein capsules in the Mark 50’s nano-housing unit, each one providing 1900 calories of protein. Two weeks of protein. Of course, Tony absolutely did not plan on staying stranded for two weeks, but he was ready to if he had to.  
Water was tougher. The suit had a coolant system that, if properly distilled, would provide roughly a liter of water – but that wasn’t nearly enough for two weeks, assuming there was still any coolant left. He hadn’t seen any signs of rain in the time he’d been there, but if the atmosphere was robust enough to hold breathable air then he supposed rainclouds might not be an impossibility.  
He decided to use the remaining nanobots of his suit to model and construct a rudimentary filtration system. He then distilled the leftover coolant into an approximate half-liter, which would last him a day if he was stringent. After he had stored the small amount of drinking water, he sat and waited for rain.  
He sat all night. None came.  
If he had a better-working suit, he could run a low-level doppler scan to find weather patterns in the surrounding areas, but he had used the remainder of the nanobots to build the filtration system – even if he broke that down, he might not have enough power to reform them into something else. His analytical brain remembered that Peter’s suit was built of the same tech that his own Mark 50 was and that maybe those nanobots could be recovered, but he quickly shut that thought out of his mind before he had to relive watching the kid (along with his suit) disintegrate in his arms.  
However, as traumatic and heartbreaking as it was, that moment and the desperation that Tony experienced as a result of it had been beneficial in one way; the specks of ash flicking away from Peter's vanishing body served as a reminder of a repossession function the nanobots of Tony’s suit held once they were dislocated from the mainframe. As gruesome as that analogy was, it got Tony in gear.

He tapped the Arc Unit on his chest and it blinked in a pattern that Tony knew to mean ‘Empty’. He then pressed his thumb to the plate, and after a moment it projected a small holographic Heads Up Display. On it were options like ‘Self Destruct’ (to detonate every nanobot synched with the Arc Unit) ‘Autopilot’ (a feature designed to program the remaining nanobots into an automatic defense system, in case Tony was unconscious or badly wounded) and ‘Recover’ (the feature Tony then selected.). Once he selected ‘Recover’, the Arc Unit popped off his chest and landed in the palm of his hand. It lit up, a scanning beam erupting from the center. He waved it across the ground, nothing happening until the beam moved briefly across his filtration system. The parts of the structure hit by the beam suddenly glowed blue and the nanobots making them up disconnected from the construct, whizzing through the air to merge back into the Arc Unit.  
In his head, Tony smiled.

/  
/  
/

After roughly an hour of trudging around the battlefield, Tony had managed to reassemble the majority of his suit. He had to sacrifice most of the armor’s color in order to return power to the armor’s main processing units, but at this point he was done bellyaching about style. Once his suit had been returned to 70% functionality, he took to the skies. It was a bit rough, but he managed to get a read on the atmospheric conditions as well as a better idea of the size of the planet – somewhere between the size of Mars and Earth’s own moon. He wasn’t able to find any standing structures or signs of life, but the flight wasn’t a total bust as he managed to get a read on some storm clouds gathering several miles to the north. After some cursing and low-flying, he managed to collect some slightly acidic rainwater which became potable (yet still disgusting) after a few rounds through his filter. He decided, for now, against trying to fly into sub-orbit with as damaged a suit as he was operating in. That was a level of desperation that he wasn't sleep-deprived enough to stoop too just yet.

Once he had solved the pressing matters, he sat in the Q-Ship and mentally checked his shopping list. He had food, water, enough of a working suit to work as basic protection – what he needed now was a beer and contact with Earth.  
One of those would have to wait.  
The second thing Tony did after the Ashing was build a radio.

 

After New York, Tony had studied up on star charts. He had loaded every following armor's hard drive with detailed and up-to-date maps of the known star systems, with the intent of using a virtual sextant provided he was ever lost at sea or stranded in the abyss of space.  
Right now, his maps weren’t telling him shit.  
So Tony did some calculations based on the rough time of Earth when he had left, (mid-afternoon) the estimated time of the planet he was currently on (he figured late morning), the time it had taken the Q-Ship to arrive on this new planet, and the constellations visible through its atmosphere once night had fallen. If his math was correct, and it always was, it seemed that his current planetary home (Tony decided to call it Sabbath [We know it as Titan]) had a day roughly 8.6 hours longer than Earth’s and was situated somewhere on the south side (relative to Earth’s south pole) of the Milky Way.  
Once he had a general idea of his place in the stars, he raided the junkyards of Sabbath for anything he could use to establish a transmitter or a receiver. He came out fairly lucky, as many of the wrecked ships and buildings scattering the surface of the planet were mostly loaded. In fact, as Tony spent more and more time on Sabbath, he put together that the planet had been up and abandoned, leaving behind most of the technology. Therefore, for somebody who built a suit of power armor with a magnet and some scrap metal, using alien tech to whip up a rudimentary radio only took the better part of an afternoon.  
He sat on the exterior hull of his Q-Ship shelter for days, plugging his radio into his arc reactor, angling it just so and sending SOS after SOS with Morse, binary, ASCII code, anything he could think of – but for days he got nothing in response.

 

He was running out of ideas.

After another night of nothing, he almost thought to hell with it. He almost gave up.  
He almost decided on letting himself rot away on some distant, unknown world, to eventually fade away like the billions he let die. He wasn’t far off either – he was sure that a few more hours without pure water would kill him.  
He had eighteen panic attacks in the week he was stranded on Sabbath. Each time, he had the same thought – Thanos is still out there. He had no way of drinking himself through them and couldn’t afford taking his suit for a joyride. He had to suffer.  
He knew Thanos had gone to Earth, where he would have hunted down Vision – which was obviously a success. If Strange, an Earthling, knew about the Titan’s quest, as did Banner, surely the other Avengers were brought into the loop. They would have flocked to Vision to protect him and the Mind Stone.  
How much of Tony’s family did Thanos rip through to get to Vision? How many more died because Tony had failed?  
He tried not to think like that, but a week of sleepless isolation is effective in eroding a man’s resolve.  
/  
/  
/  
He had a dream during his final night on Sabbath. He dreamt of a storm, a hurricane the size of a universe that swallowed every single thing in existence. Nothing was safe from the storm, and Tony watched as galaxies and solar systems and beings the size of stars and living planets and trillions and trillions of people were sucked in, getting bashed and battered in the grinding whirlpool of the storm – but in the center of all of it, in the eye of the storm, Tony found himself standing across from the shape of a man; a man he almost immediately recognized as the hovering form of Doctor Strange.

Strange was meditating above the ground, as he had been when he claimed to have glimpsed the future. His eyes were shut, but he motioned to Stark.  
“Sit,” his voice echoed.  
Tony suddenly found himself standing next to a tattered armchair. He sat.  
“Are you real?”  
Strange shrugged, his eyes remaining closed.  
“I’m real to you.”  
“Don’t give me the Morpheus bullshit. Are you real?”  
“Reality is irrelevant at the moment, Tony, now I need you to listen.”  
Tony huffed in dissatisfaction but leaned back in the chair, waving his hands in a ‘go on’ gesture. He’d had whack dreams before that ended up being nothing more than anxiety-induced nonsense, so he figured this was no different and decided to humor the floating wizard for a bit.  
“I told you what I did was the only way. I meant that,” he said ominously, eyes still shut.  
“Care to elaborate on that?” Tony had, of course, been obsessively fixated on the Doctor’s last words for the last few days. If the only answer he would get would be from a dream, he supposed it would be better than nothing.  
“I would love to, but unfortunately the timelines are already so fragile that I fear giving you much more information could throw things off the rails. I just need you to trust me,” He pleaded, sensing Tony’s frustration.  
“I had to find a way to reach you to encourage you not to give up,” he continued, not allowing Tony to interject. “The future is still on track but nothing is ever set in stone. Specific things need to unfold in order for this to work –“ He held up a hand to silence Tony, as he was about to speak up – “And you have a vital role to play. You can’t allow yourself to cave. Not yet.”  
Tony scoffed and stood from the chair.  
“This isn’t the first fever dream I’ve had telling me not to kill myself, okay? I’m gonna wake up now. See you in hell.” He turned to leave but found himself standing directly across from Strange again.  
“What is your plan to return to Earth?” the Doctor asked.  
Tony sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Fix a spaceship and go home.”  
“And Plan B, if you aren’t able to successfully reverse engineer alien technology?” Strange retorted bitingly.  
“Die alone.” Tony spat. Strange frowned.  
“I can never tell when you’re being serious.”  
“What the hell else is there left to do, Strange?” He practically shouted, the bottled-up rage and despair that had plagued him every day of the last week finally catching up to him. “Everyone’s dead. You’re dead. You’re not even real, you’re just a figment of my anxiety-riddled brain. I haven't had a hit of endorphins in like two hundred hours. Leave me alone.”  
Strange hovered in silence for several long seconds as Tony eyed him, angrily waiting for a response.  
“Your options have not yet been exhausted. There is a way to fix this.”  
“Then tell me.”  
“I can’t do that.”  
“Draw me a god damn picture, then. Give me a sudoku puzzle. An arrow saying ‘go here’. Something, for god’s sake, Strange! Look around you!!”  
Tony gestured wildly to the swirling existential nightmare that they were standing in the center of.  
“I’m guessing this is the fabric of reality or whatever. All screwed to hell and back, TRILLIONS of lives lost, yet you just want to float there dramatically and withhold any and all information that will help me glue shit back together.”  
Strange went to speak, but this time Tony was the one to interrupt.  
“And what the hell did was that??” He practically screamed, “Just giving him the damn Time Stone? Are you out of your mind? This is as much your fault as it is Quill’s! People died, Strange! I don’t even know who else is left out there!”  
Strange sighed. His postured slumped and he ran his hands through his hair, still hovering a few feet from the ground.  
“We all have our parts to play. I’ve done mine; the universe is depending on you doing yours, a part you have played in an exemplary fashion for the better part of the last decade. Fulfilling a philosophy that you yourself branded.”  
Tony stared at him. A philosophy? The hell was that supposed to mean? No amount of inward thought would fix half the universe. He needed a big red undo button, which Strange had apparently found.  
Tony could strangle him.  
“If I ever find a way to fix this and bring you all back to life, I’m going to kill you." Strange didn't seem amused, so Stark continued. "What philosophy?”  
Strange didn't answer for a moment. Then Stephen’s eyes opened, revealing hollow pits of swirling golden-orange light, and when he spoke his next words he spoke them in Tony’s voice.

“If we can’t protect the Earth, then you can be damn well sure we’ll avenge it.”  
/  
/  
/  
Tony woke up in a colder sweat than any of his previous nightmares had caused. And when the sun rose for the eighth time on Sabbath, Tony, imbued with a new stubborn determination, made a decision. He would find a way off the planet in the next 24 hours or he would die trying. 

He almost died trying, of course, but that’s neither here nor there.

After plugging his suit into an amalgamation of Q-Ship reactors and various radioactive isotopes he had pulled out from the planet’s surface, Tony managed to charge the Arc Reactor up to nearly 100%. It was just enough to get Tony off the planet and into sub-orbit, where he figured he would be able to send a wide-sweeping SOS without the interference of a heavy atmosphere. 

He didn’t have enough quite juice to break Sabbath’s gravitational pull, however. The planet’s orbital path had already been thrown so out of whack that Tony was at its mercy almost the moment he left the ground, but with a few course-corrective thruster pulses he managed to retain a stable flight pattern. As he orbited Sabbath, keeping an eye on his hull pressurization (holding just below acceptable levels but not dipping into fatal territory) and his oxygen (keeping steading enough to allow him a fairly comfortable breathing rate), he sent distress signal after distress signal hoping that someone, something¸ would pick up.  
But he knew it was pointless. He didn’t have nearly enough power left in the suit to retain a seal or get him back to the ground safely. He had twenty-four minutes of breathable air left, then he would suffocate. Or, if he managed to ration his breaths properly, he would have forty minutes of power in the thrusters before he lost orbit and plummeted to the surface. Not to mention, of course, the faint rings of debris that surrounded Sabbath, inching closer to Tony’s orbit with every lap he made.  
He was running out of time.  
He downgraded from a continuous burn to only utilizing short, controlled bursts to manage his trajectory – but it was decidedly fruitless. Eventually, turbulent flight caused by his drained power cells threw him into a decaying orbit that threatened to eject him further into space, where he would lose the guiding gravitational pull of Sabbath and be at the mercy of time. Running on fumes, he tried one last time to slow himself down and lessen the spin he had found himself entering, but the move proved to be a disastrous one. After the attempt, his thrusters failed and sent him into a spiral. He tried fruitlessly to maintain a steady flight but the only power remaining in his damaged suit were the vital life support systems, keeping him breathing and pressurized. Once the Arc Reactor went, all the heat left Tony’s body and he went into shock.

He lost orbit and fell into open space approximately twenty minutes after leaving the planet’s surface. Somewhere, in the back of the only consciousness he had remaining, he made a mental note to juice up the backup life support batteries in case something like this ever happened again. He would have the first time – but the Mark 50 was only a prototype.  
He never expected to use it.

He blacked out after spinning uncontrollably for ten minutes, the cold taking him.  
/  
/  
/  
“Hey. Rise and shine, Hot Rod.”  
Tony regained consciousness to the sound of a woman’s voice and the soothing sense of warmth. He blinked awake, eyes taking a moment to adjust to the blinding interior lighting he was currently bathed in.  
“I managed to receive your distress signal – how, I’m not sure, as it was so weak – but it looks like I arrived just in time.” She spoke again, and only then did Tony realize that he was laying down on a warm metal surface. He tried to sit up but decided to remain horizontal once his head nearly exploded in oxygen-deprived agony.  
“Who the hell are you? Where -” He gasped, only now realizing how coarse and breathless his own voice was. He hadn’t spoken aloud in almost a week. He turned his head enough to see who the voice belonged to. She was sitting a few feet from him, regarding him pensively while absently brushing long blonde strands of hair from her vision. She paused for a moment then frowned in thought, looking Tony over with the hardened analytical gaze Tony had only seen from generals; or Cap; or, sometimes, himself.  
“My name is Captain Danvers,” she replied after a moment of silence, “And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we’re on the same mission.”  
/  
If we can’t protect the Earth, then you can be damn well sure we’ll Avenge it. 


End file.
